If you have two supports in the right places, consider an inverted L.

Basically, an inverted L is a 1/4 wave of wire which is fed at the bottom
with coax. It runs vertically for as much of its length as possible, then
makes up to a right angle bend with the remainder of the antenna horozontal
at the top.

You must install at least a few ground radials just as you would for any
other quarter wave verticle. These radials should be a quarter wave long,
but if that's not possible, the  longer the radials, the better.

There are variations of this antenna which will tune 160, 80, and some even
40 on the same antenna.

Another short possibility is the Alpha Delta Twin Sloper. This works best if
you have a tower at least 40 feet tall with a tri band beam on top. This
antenna looks like an inverted vee, but one side is a full quarter wave for
80, and the other is a 40 meter quarter wave with a loading coil and an
additional 20 feet of wire for 160.

It uses the tower for its ground. If you hang it from a tree, you must run a
vertical wire from its ground connection to an earth ground.

I used one of these antennas for a little while. It worked well on 80 and
40, and would make contacts on 160, but I was deffinately not a big gun with
it.

Using the automatic tuner in my TS570, I could tune the twin sloper on 30
and 17 meters with pretty good results too.

There are numerous short vertical designs which will work well on a given
narrow portion of the band. These too require ground radials. The more
radials, the better.

My two cents.


Mike Duke, K5XU
American Council of Blind Radio Amateurs